Tuesday, 20 August 2013

Notes From The Studio....

We
are living in this country under an extremist government. Every day we witness
a systemic attack on society’s poor, which the government seem to openly
despise; the vulnerable, with the shameless treatment of the disabled and the
sick at the sharp end of the Atos axe and the vile bedroom tax; and the state,
as it is ruthlessly stripped back and away as we step back to a pre-war England
that serves the vested interest of the very few at the behest of the rest of
society (but of course, there is ‘no such thing as society’). And we have an
opposition party that sits dithering at the side, not wanting to rock the boat,
upset the middle. I am genuinely frightened every day, and angry, but also feel
very disempowered and helpless, like a lot of people, about what to bloody do
about it, and where we will be as a nation at the end of these catastrophic
times.

I
recently enjoyed a series of Ken Loach films on Film 4, including the recent ‘The
Spirit of 45’. I found this documentary about the building of the Welfare State
after the Second World War by the Attlee led Labour Government incredibly
inspiring and affirming that things can change for the common good when working
people and communities work collectively together. The final part of the film
however, which covered the rise of Thatcher and the brutal beginning of her assault
on the State and working class communities, particularly in the North and
Midlands, and the celebration of an ideology based on individualism and competition
and materialism depressing viewing. It also highlighted just how dangerous
these times are that we are living in in this country as this coalition drag us
gleefully back to pre-war times, when any societal gains to be made are for the
benefit of the very few rich, not the many. Britain is a country of such enormous
inequalities. So no, don’t ask me to be pleased about the birth of the next
‘heir to the throne’.

Archive photo of the construction of the M6 motorway, Bescot, near Walsall 1960s

I’ve
travelled fairly extensively around the UK and Europe, and visited New York a
few times too, but probably, and somewhat bizarrely, one of my favourite
journeys is the small stretch of the M6 between Walsall and Birmingham. It has
a grey, bleak beauty that really appeals to my sensibility. I love the views of
the rusty train sidings, the large, anonymous, block factories, the football
stadiums, digital advertising hoardings, the wire and steel fields of pylons in
the skyline; the skeletal frames of the gas stations, the looping concrete highway
of Spaghetti Junction as you leave at exit 6 to swoop roller coaster-like into
the city, taking in the strange architecture of Star City on the left and the
older buildings of Aston on the right. You feel pulled underground into the
belly of Birmingham by the Aston Expressway and spat out again on the other
side by the Queensway tunnel, which has taken you in and out so quickly that
you haven’t witnessed anything other than the enveloping tunnel walls that
speed past. For the same reasons regarding the industrial, bleak view I also
really like the small stretch of the M5 from Junction 5 to 1, which brings you
into West Bromwich. I travel this most weeks as I visit my parents, and it is
underneath here, just by Junction 2 in fact, that my current paintings are
based in a location in the canal basin near Smethwick hidden underneath the
monolithic, roaring motorway above.

These
journeys into cities are romantic, even in their own way the ones into Birmingham
or West Brom. Two other favourite journey’s like this include the trip into New
York from the airport on the New Jersey Turnpike, which has many mythic rock ‘n’
roll associations, from Bruce to Dylan to Chuck Berry. It’s incredibly exciting
whizzing along, dodging in and out of the busy lanes of the highway as the impressive
New York skyline starts to appear, mirage-like, on the horizon.

I
also really like the trip into Paris from the autoroute, as you head through
the outlying Parisien suburbs of graffited tower blocks and concrete tenements
(a place brilliantly captured in the film ‘La Haine’ in 1995). These are the
places that the Parisien working class were forced into decades ago, as the French
capital became more gentrified and exclusive. You can see the same thing
currently happening in London where all the current shameless benefit cuts are forcing
people out of their long established communities. Anyway, my first trip to
Paris was accompanying students on a residential visit. It was particularly memorable
as being my first trip to this mainland Europe, travelling overnight on the
Eurotunnel and reading all about David Bowie, Brian Eno and Iggy Pop and their creative
adventures in Berlin in the 1970’s. It seemed to aptly set the scene as we
headed into the city and the museums and galleries. In the next few days I would
find myself understanding painting on a much more profound level than ever
before, staggering from David to Courbet to Picasso and everything else,
totally giddy, leaving museums with pockets full of postcards I would line
around my small hotel room each night. Seeing these great artworks in the context
of this great city made me realize just how important painting really was, and
how different Europe’s relation to art and culture was than England’s tired skepticism.

'La Haine', film still, 1995

I
love travelling (it was this time last year I was in Scandinavia), but this
romanticism for the local motorway journey, underscores a lot of my current
thinking about the idea of home and identity as I develop my interest in
landscape, in particular the edgelands of my native Black Country. It’s
surprising to me that my landscape work has settled into looking at the places
I have always known, yet I realize that this is what all the landscape painters
I admire, current and past, have done. It’s not really profound, but it’s only
now that I’m trying to carve my own place in painting the land that I have
really reflected upon it more deeply.

The
recent death of Thatcher bought up a lot of memories and feelings about her destructive
‘legacy’ on the Black Country and the industrial landscape of the West Midlands
when I was growing up in the 1980’s. I’m trying to bring some of this
experience into some of the new paintings I’m working on to exhibit in Nuneaton
in January next year. The exhibition will be called ‘Black Highway’.

I’ve
been working on this current painting (above) for about six weeks, which is not
like me (readers of this blog may know that I normally try and execute my
paintings in one session), but I’m enjoying it. It’s borne a bit out of
circumstance, as my summer holidays these days are taken up looking after my
children, whereas before becoming a parent the six weeks break were a very
productive time. Now I have to accept it has to be a break from the studio. It’s
not finished yet. I’ve been looking at the treatment of architecture in Giotto’s
paintings in the last couple of days for some new ideas. I’ve particularly
struggled with the factory in the background, as I remain unconvinced by what I’ve
done.

This
summer I have also become a parent again to a beautiful baby girl, which has been lovely. I’ve therefore
only been able to work on this painting for a couple of hours each evening after
throwing the kids in bed, but it has been a good experience. I’ve just been chucking
a great deal of paint and turpentine on the surface, rubbing it back, building
it up, responding to accident, thinking each day in between parenting (I know doesn’t
sound good!) about what next, until I return each evening. I’ve wanted to throw
a few different things in the mix with my painting for some time, and with my
new arrival, it looks like this may be the way I’ll be doing things for a while.
It’s all good though…..it certainly helps keep things in perspective.

2 comments:

Congratulations on the new extension to your family Shaun. I hope you've all been able to enjoy some quality time together.

I don't have anything like the same excuse for my relatively slow progress this summer but it makes me feel better to know someone else can spend six weeks on the same painting. Just doing it whenever/however, is the most important thing ultimately.